How to Dry Flowers So You Can Enjoy Them for Years to Come
Drying flowers from your flower garden or a special bouquet you'd like as a keepsake is a simple way to enjoy their beauty for years. Just like pressed flowers, dried bouquets bring nature indoors, and it’s not difficult to do! “You can dry almost any flower successfully,” says Allison Zeeb, pressed flower artist and owner of Capturing Blooms. “Dried flowers can be used in craft projects or to display as a lasting bouquet. It’s also much more inexpensive to dry your own flowers than to purchase them.”
Here’s how to do it:
Choose your flowers.
Choose flowers with no blemishes or yellowing leaves. The sky’s the limit: Many different flowers dry well, including roses, magnolia blossoms, zinnias, rudbeckia, eucalyptus, and hydrangeas, says Zeeb. You also can dry ornamental grasses or herbs.
Choose your method for drying.
There are a few different ways to dry flowers. The first (and the simplest!) is to let them dry in a vase with no water. Keep them out of direct sunlight so they don’t fade. Hydrangeas, eucalyptus, and lavender all do well and take about 2 weeks to dry fully. While this requires zero effort, it doesn’t work for every flower, but it’s certainly worth a try if you don’t have any other supplies on hand.
A method that works for many flowers is to bind the stems together with a rubber band, remove the leaves, then hang them upside down for 2 to 3 weeks in a cool, dark place where you won’t bump into them. A basement, closet, or laundry room works well for this purpose, says Zeeb. But don’t use the bathroom, which has too much humidity. In the basement, you can tap a nail into the joists, then attach the bouquet, or clip them or to a hanger in the closet. Hanging them upside down prevents the heads from drooping when dry.
One more way you can dry flowers, especially individual blooms, is to use silica gel. Place about ¼ inch of the gel in the bottom of a Mason jar or large plastic container with lid. Then place the blossom in the jar and gently spoon or pour more silica gel on top of the flower until it’s covered completely. Place the lid on the container, and store for 5 days. “The moisture is pulled out of the flower, and you can use the silica gel several times,” says Zeeb. After removing the flower, place the silica gel on a cookie sheet to dry out, then reuse.
Use your dried flowers in arts and crafts projects.
Dried flowers can be used as simple bouquets in any room of the house. Or use individual blooms in creative ways such as in a glass lamp base, as a decorative headpiece for weddings, on wreaths, mixed into bath salts, displayed in a shadow box, or in potpourri, candles, or soaps.
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